


Never Let Me Go

by LiterateChick



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: 10 years of solitude will really fuck a girl up, Angst, Anxiety, Gen, Loneliness, and when they finally found her they weren't the same people she left, lup spent a long ass time in that umbrella
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-18 23:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12398055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiterateChick/pseuds/LiterateChick
Summary: The last time Lup dies Taako doesn't even notice. AKA I had a lot of Lup feels so I made some pain.





	Never Let Me Go

The last time Lup dies she curses herself slightly, but mostly she’s just so fucking relieved. The gauntlet is done with, stored away, she’ll never have to hear another story about a glassed city, never have to know a body count that she caused. She’ll still have the nightmares, she knows that. She’ll still be haunted by the lives that were lost. But it will all stop now. She’ll be able to move on, even if it is as a litch, maybe she’ll be able to heal eventually.

But then the umbrastaff flips inside out and sucks her in, and for the years that she fights for consciousness the thought that comes back to her whenever she is able to have a thought is that they won’t know what happened to her. Barry, Taako, Lucretia, her family, they’ll look for her and not find her. She’s not worried about them giving up, she knows them and knows they’ll never give up on her, but she hates that she’s spending so long away from them.

As the years stretch on she finds she can have thoughts more regularly. She gains her senses back and she can’t tell how long it’s been but she knows that it’s been far too long. She waits. She’s never been good at waiting, but there’s not much else to do. As time stretches on and on forever she starts to wonder if maybe her family won’t find her. It’s a fear that she spends years doing her best to push away, but it starts to haunt her. What if it had been so long that they, Barry and Lucretia and Magnus at least, aren’t around to look for her anymore? Human lives are so short. The thought breaks her heart every time her treacherous brain cycles back to it. She reminds herself that Barry will keep looking for her even if his physical body fails. She reminds herself that out of all of them Taako at least is still kicking, it can’t have been that long. But what if it has been? She has no way of knowing.

Eventually her fears diversify. Maybe they eventually gave up on her after all. Maybe Taako is still out there but he’s moved on. He was never very good at waiting either. She doesn’t want to believe that he could ever forget about her, doesn’t want to believe that of any of them, but it keeps coming back. In her worst moments she sees herself being replaced, sees her brother with someone else to know everything about him, sees Barry moving on and finding someone new. She knows, sometimes, that they would never do that to her. She knows, other times, that they have absolutely moved on after so long and she just hopes, through gasping sobs, that they’re happy without her.

As time goes on she becomes more lost. She hates that dwarf and this stupid fucking umbrastaff and that gauntlet and herself for making them. It takes her years but she begins to find some kind of peace in between the moments of blinding fear. She can sit now, for hours or maybe days, breathing slowly and keeping her mind blank so that her worst thoughts can’t find her. They still do, worming through her meditation every so often, and sometimes they can still take over and she finds herself falling down endless holes, tears streaking her face, images of her best friends, her family, the people she loves most in the world, damaged and bloodied and killed, hurt and moving on with their lives without her, forgetting about her, dying of old age, never seeing her again. All of that over and over until she can pull herself out of those loops, calm down and return to her meditation. And it cycles like that over and over and over again. Sometimes she thinks this is all she’ll ever be.  

And then it happens. She hears it, them, him.

She extends her sight beyond the umbrastaff and cries out when she sees him. It really is them, her brother and Magnus and Merle, and they look a bit older, but it’s them and they’re not dead or hurt or a hundred years old. And they’ve found her! She jumps to her feet and shouts: “Taako! Magnus! Merle! _Taako!_ ” They can’t hear her, of course, but they look over at her soon enough. This is it, finally, after what felt like an eternity, her family has found her, and they’re going to take her home.

But something isn’t right. It takes her a moment to realize, but when all three of them look over and see her and there isn’t any recognition something cold runs through her. How can they not recognize that it’s her? Or at least her body, if they can’t put together that she’s in the umbrastaff? But they’re just standing around cracking jokes. Taako gets Merle to go over to her body. He puts his hand on the umbrastaff and Lup doesn’t know what’s going on but she can’t have that. She feels bad about firing Merle against the wall but then Taako steps forwards and she calls out to him, reaches for him, even though she knows its no use. He picks up the umbrella and she involuntarily lets out a dry sob.

Something is wrong with him. She feels it almost instantly. There’s something wrong and this isn’t her brother, not the way she knows him. It’s almost like there’s something missing, some part of him that she used to recognize. He doesn’t even react when he picks up the umbrastaff, it’s like he doesn’t remember its hers. He looks around, he’s holding her in his arms and he doesn’t realize, and he doesn’t seem to care. Maybe he’s mad at her, she thinks. Before the self hatred and fear can pull her back under, though, she shoves it aside. That doesn’t matter, none of that matters. No matter what’s going on or why her brother seems so off, the important thing is that he’s here and he’s found her. He’s safe and she’s by his side again, and that’s all that matters.

She reminds herself of that over and over again as they find the gauntlet, as she has to watch as it takes over someone else. She wants to close her eyes to the outside world and never look again as the dwarf bursts into flame and leaves the caves. Gods, it’s happening again. She died for nothing, she thinks. All of this, all these years of lonely torture, for nothing. The gauntlet is back out in the world. This strange version of her brother and her closest friends have let her curse out on the world again.

She doesn’t close her eyes though. She watches, needing to keep an eye on her family, as they leave the caves and make their way back to the little town. They track the dwarf down, and they’re standing outside a tavern, and someone runs out of it, and she screams.

It’s Barry. It’s _her_ Barry! He’ll recognize her, she’s sure. Whatever’s going on with Taako and Magnus and Merle, Barry will see her and recognize her and it will all be okay. This will all be okay.

Then the dwarf comes out of the tavern, and he swings his fist down and Lup has to watch as her own gauntlet sends Barry crumpling to the ground.

She waits, feeling damp tears but unaware that she's crying, watching for his litch form, but it doesn’t come. He’s just gone. Lup does cut off her vision then, she just can’t bear to look. This new world that she’s come into makes no sense and her family aren’t the same people they used to be and she doesn’t understand what’s going on but it hurts and she doesn’t want to see it.

Her resolve not to look doesn’t last long. She sees Taako picking up the gauntlet, look at it curiously, put it in his bag. The world around them has been glassed but at least someone who can resist the gauntlet has it now. She watches as a ball descends from the heavens and they, plus the orc woman who seems to know more about this than any of them, get on it and fly up to the moon base. She sees Magnus, Taako and Merle drink from Fisher’s tank and gain some of their memories back, she sees a new older Lucretia and hears her story, and she starts to put together what must have happened. Her family is missing some things, missing some memories and some parts and they need her. Taako, especially, needs her. He's forgotten about her, and that's taken something from him. But she’s found him, even if he doesn’t know it or her yet. And she’s going to stay there with him, protect him and her family, do what she can to keep them safe. She’s never going to leave them again.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear Lup is my favourite, but sometimes she hurts. This had a first chapter too with Taako dying for the first time, but I felt like it wasn't as good as this so I'm posting this one first. Whether I ever post the second part (which happens earlier?? oh well) kind of depends on how you guys like this part haha. Anyway I hoped you liked this and also sorry!


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